When the topic of productivity in the workplace comes to light, it is very tempting to focus on innovative and easy-to-sell solutions to employees. After all, installing a pool table or putting a ping pong table in the office ensures that everyone realizes that some things are changing and accepts it.
But if what you are thinking about is making changes that improve the productivity of your team in the long term, perhaps you should look at other types of strategies that have already been successfully tested. Not everything in this life consists of working with Word, Excel, PDF and other files that we see every day on our computer screens.
5 strategies to increase productivity at work
Some ideas might not be as spectacular as using a scooter inside the office, but they are also effective. Take a look at the five proposals that we leave you below in order to implement them in what remains of 2019:
- Open doors to nature.
- Make sleep a priority.
- Reinforce rest times.
- Ergonomics as a flag
- Offers different types of workplaces.
If you really want to improve productivity in your company, with these five ideas you are guaranteed that over time you will notice the increase in the productivity of your employees. Let’s see each of them in more detail.
1. Open doors to nature
The research that is frequently published firmly defends the idea that spending time outdoors favors our health and our productivity. The same happens when we bring what exists outside into the office. Allowing natural light and vegetation (in the form of plants and flowers) into the workplace are proven methods that improve staff performance.
When talking about sunlight, it was recently published that its presence improves the well-being of employees and their productivity by being more creative. It also helps them sleep more at night, something always very grateful to be able to perform in the workplace.
Even if your workplace doesn’t have many windows, you can get small improvements if you allow the team to open the blinds or try to reorganize the space so that they can have their tables as close to the windows as possible. Another option is to invest money in buying light bulbs that simulate natural light.
If we talk about nature and its flora, a study done in the United Kingdom showed that offices that had plants helped workers feel happier in their work environment, being 15% more productive than in other offices.
In addition, having flowers has been shown to be a good element that favors creativity and innovation. Plants help filter the air, improving the health of employees (reduces absenteeism!).
Spaces with a lot of empty space are ideal for introducing a green touch that gives life to the office. Choose plants that are easy to care for and make sure someone is in charge of watering them — having dead plants is a waste of time.
2. Make sleep a priority
At this point, the Internet is full of articles talking about the importance of sleep. While there are companies that pay attention to this concept, it is important to consider whether your office or company is really prepared for your employees to meet this basic need. It is not only appropriate for your employees. It is also to increase productivity.
Some research suggests that those workers with lack of rest show serious drops in performance, so it is essential to give your employees the opportunity to sleep the necessary hours each day (as a recommendation, you should sleep 7 to 8 hours a day).
This can focus on:
- Encourage employees to finish their workdays with enough time to get home and have dinner or spend time with their family before sleeping.
- Establish a defined policy on “not sending or checking email in the afternoon”.
- Allow flexible hours so that employees can set their shifts based on the best time to rest.
- If your employees eat outside the office, give them time if they need to take a nap before returning to work
3. Reinforce rest times
For some employees it is not enough to perform their daily tasks and go home to rest.
It has been shown that people who take light breaks throughout their workday tend to be more productive. Taking into account that the ideal rest depends on each person, there is evidence that the best work cycle is estimated at 52 minutes of effective work and then a 17-minute break.
The members of your team need to disconnect from their computers yes or yes.
This gives them time to breathe, relax, clear their minds and recharge their batteries before returning to work. It also makes their physical and mental health improve by giving their bodies and eyes a rest after spending a long time doing a task.
Make taking a break natural in your company by following some of these tips:
- Educate your employees about the importance of taking breaks and make them see that stopping is okay, not the other way around.
- Let your employees go for a walk and get some air.
- Encourage them to stop working during their lunch break and leave their desks at that time.
- Offer a yoga session or similar that helps your employees relax.
4. Ergonomics as a flag
It may not be the first thing you think about when you have to negotiate a sale or have to meet with investors looking for their profitability, but in fact this concept can play a relevant role in the productivity of your office.
Cheap chairs (with everything they entail) can be key to causing discomforts such as body pain, headache, breathing problems and fatigue — all causing loss of performance and factors that favor absenteeism. For this reason alone, it is necessary to invest in quality material for your office, which provides comfort, adaptability and ergonomics.
While you work on it, consider implementing these extra tricks:
- Make sure that the computer screens are high enough so that your workers do not have to put their necks in an unnatural position to see what they are doing. This can drastically reduce neck pain and shoulder tension.
- Encourage your employees to check that their monitors are placed approximately 40 centimeters from where they are placed to work. This will help prevent eye problems.
- If there is an employee who uses a laptop, you can invest in external keyboards to reduce wrist and forearm injuries.
5. Offers different types of workplaces
In recent years, open-space offices have marked a before and after. While initially they were seen as the panacea of productivity, the current idea differs a bit from that vision. The idea is that open spaces can cause people not to focus on their main work.
Therefore, it may be more appropriate to find the balance in having common work areas and private areas, in order to promote innovation, productivity and profitability.
Since each member has their own preferences when it comes to optimizing productivity, it is important to provide a variety of spaces where the different needs of all employees can be accommodated. To this end, do not skimp when looking for the best possible combination of collaborative space and private areas.
By implementing these strategies, you are guaranteed that work performance will increase. Only that? No, in addition these tricks increase the chances that your team is happier and therefore more productive.
